A new filing in Oracle's copyright infringement lawsuit against Google's Android suggests that Oracle wants more money in damages than Android has earned in its entire two-plus years of history.
If Oracle wins, Google might have no choice but to start charging handset makers for Android -- or scrap the business altogether.
That's the conclusion of intellectual property commentator Florian Mueller, who analyzed a Google legal filing on his blog earlier today.
In the filing, Google says that Oracle is not just looking for a licensing deal, but also seeking fines for past infringement.
Parts of the filing are blacked out, but Mueller does some sleuth work to figure out what Oracle is looking for:
Oracle apparently wants all ad revenues from search on Android phones to be included as part of the royalty rate used to calculate damages.
Oracle notes that Microsoft paid Sun (who owned the copyrights at issue) $900 million to protect against "fragmentation of Java." The fact that Oracle cites such a big number suggests it's seeking a payment along the lines of its recent $1.3 billion win from SAP.
Oracle is seeking a judgment of willful infringement, which lets the judge triple the award for past infringement.
The filing also says Google was in negotiations with Sun to buy the necessary Java mobile licenses, but balked at Sun's terms. Bad move.
A lot of this is probably negotiation through the courts -- plaintiffs always try to make the damages look as bad as possible as a negotiating tactic. But Mueller points out that trial is less than five months away and there's so far no settlement in sight.

Seriously, is anyone worried about this? If Oracle is allowed to charge for licenses of java for Android and other phones/PDA's but allow free use from every PC and Mac in the world, shouldn't we worry about what is to come for every user in the world? I know of way too many devices that run java, but not flash. In researching this in the last month, Adobe has never had a problem with distribution of the flash player to compatible devices.

Personally, I think Oracle is a little to zealous in their efforts. AFAIK, there was not any manipulation of their code without proper rights granted, nor any modifications of any such kind that would deem this suit necessary.

Oracle, come down from the mountain and live in the real world. If there's anything that history has taught me about separation of the classes is this: revolution is inevitable.